New Brunswick college looks to help fill nursing positions

With fall admission officially on the agenda, Moncton’s Oulton College’s new accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program looks to help fill vacancies across the province.

The goal is to get nurses into hospitals quickly, about a year faster than the traditional nursing programs offered.

“At the time we started this process, there were no three-year programs in this province,” said college president Darcie Reidpath. “These students will work hard. They’re going to go 36 months around the clock.”

• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

The program received preliminary approval from the Nursing Association of New Brunswick and there are already about 36 students expected in the first year this September.

“We don’t want to create illusions that this is going to be the end all and be all, we want to make sure we do this strategically, that the people we are graduating are ready to take on the tasks that’s ahead of them,” said Post-Secondary Education, Training & Labour Minister Greg Turner. “I think focusing on a group of 30-36, we can make sure we get it right, everything’s going smoothly, and we can grow gradually in a very strategic way to get to that 100 level.”

According to the college, the course load will include more than 1,700 hours of hands-on experience including more than 1,300 hours dedicated just to clinical settings.

Reidpath says Oulton College purchased a building on Elmwood Drive last year with the intentions of moving all their nursing programs to that location, but due to the shortened timeline and September start, the practical nursing lab at their main campus will undergo some renovations to make it a suitable space.

“We already have a number of faculty hired that will be starting in the coming months now that we know it’s official and these are all nurses with minimum bachelors, most of them masters and PhDs,” she said. “Our environment isn’t going to change in terms of how we work with students and the small classes. That was really our goal. It wasn’t to go back to the two year program, it was to give students an environment, a smaller environment, smaller class sizes, small clinical groups where they would never be in an auditorium with 300-400 students.”

According to New Brunswick’s Department of Health, Regional Health Authorities hired a total of 798 permanent registered and licensed practical nurses between April 2023 and the end of March 2024.

Health Minister Bruce Fitch says steps have also been taken to train more nurses over the last five years.

“When we took over government, there was about 888 students in the nursing degrees, that has increased now to 1,689, so there’s been a substantial increase in the number of seats, the number of individuals studying and they’re graduating all the time,” said Fitch.

He says that increase was seen at the University of New Brunswick and Université de Moncton.

“Darcie and Erin at Oulton’s Business College have jumped up and said, ‘There’s still going to be a need,’ and the fact that they moved it to a three year program is really important,” he said.

However, the department says there are still currently 993 spots to fill in the province, which works out to roughly 13 per cent of the 7,513 budgeted registered nurse and licensed practical nurse positions within the Horizon and Vitalité health networks and Extra-Mural/Ambulance New Brunswick.

New Brunswick Nurses Union president Paula Doucet says Oulton’s new program is great news, but work still needs to be done right now.

“There is still about 1,000 to 1,100 [vacancies] actually if we include the long term care sector as well that we’re missing registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and nurse practitioners across the province,” said Doucet. “I think over the last number of months and even years, there’s been a lot of initiatives put into place for recruitment, but nothing for retention and we’ve been saying for sometime now that if you recruit without retaining the experienced staff, you’re actually setting folks up to fail.”

Currently the union is in negotiations for all of the nurses across the province and Doucet says New Brunswick nurses are actually the lowest paid in the Atlantic provinces.

“We need to be comparable with our counterparts, particularly in Nova Scotia which is a very close option for nurses when they graduate,” she said.

“We still need to be looking at other initiatives for right now and how to support the current staff that we have. One of the ways is about retaining and respecting them and listening to what they have to say when it comes to ideas which would make their work life better.”

Oulton College says the accelerated program will be the first degree program to be offered by a college in New Brunswick and they are still accepting applications for fall semester.

“A little bit unique to Oulton is we don’t have a deadline to apply, so our process is not first come first serve,” said Reidpath. “They’ll go through a couple of steps including a CASPer test, which is a bit of an aptitude test, and a facility interview and so then those who score well will be offered a seat, so we just continue that until we have our class full.”

She notes tuition is about $20,000 per year.

For Doucet this announcement is timely as it comes at the start of National Nurses Week.

The union says this year’s theme is Changing Lives, Shaping Tomorrow, and there are a number of events taking place across New Brunswick to recognize, honour and celebrate the province’s nurses.

“Just a huge shout out to all the licenced practical nurses, registered nurses, and nurse practitioners in the province of New Brunswick,” said Doucet. “I want to wish you all a happy Nurses Week.”

For more New Brunswick news visit our dedicated provincial page.